today for you

(Following off the whole college time-warp, but this bit in particular.)

Angel's been back in the room for about half an hour when Steve comes in. "Dinner time is now, you. Get up."

"I already ate." Several times, in fact, but even Angel doesn't know how to explain that one. Steve just shrugs, and opens the fridge to stick a water bottle in.

"Wait, you went and got pizza without inviting me?" He doesn't sound at all surprised by the bright purple Tupperware.

"It was... sort of spur of the moment."
( and on it goes. )

(After this.)

Maybe the detective work can wait, but this can't, far as Angel can tell. So while Mark's still occupied, he heads upstairs.
Mark's room is every bit as unlocked as it was the night Angel left that note about Maureen in there. It doesn't take long for him to find the camera Faith got Mark for Christmas; it may not be Mark's old standby, but it's still a camera, so of course it's somewhere easy to find.
And it's idiot-proof, from the looks of things, which means Mark himself may never figure out how it works.
Angel's not stealing it, just... borrowing. Without permission. And with every intention of bringing it back. He even leaves a note to that effect.
Mark -
Borrowing your spare camera, since you don't seem interested in filming stuff at the moment. Will give it back when you recover your senses; just think someone ought to be filming about now.
-Angel

If Mark's acting this weird, whatever's going on is probably getting to more than just him. And he might lose it if he doesn't get any of this on film, whether he can actually get to the footage later or not.
It's the principle of the thing.

(After this.)

Mark's door is unlocked. Mark himself is sprawled across his bed, obviously... well, dead to the world. In a manner of speaking.
Angel shakes his head, and leaves Mark's camera somewhere he'll see it more or less as soon as he wakes up. There's a note on top of it, since Angel knows he'll see it if it's there.
( All right, perhaps it's a bit more of a letter. )

Lena had said she was renting a car, had said she'd be able to find the restaurant, had said Angel didn't have to come and meet her. But really, he thinks, why put this off any longer than they have to?
And I do not take 'no.'
To that end, he's taken a cab to Albuquerque's airport, and is waiting at the bottom of the escalator to baggage claim.

Angel's trying to save the shopping trip for while Lena's around. In the meantime (and it's a good thing the meantime in question is only a couple of days, really), he's been sitting around the restaurant, people-watching. For all it's hardly the same thing, the atmosphere of the place does feel a bit like the bar's. He wouldn't have thought you could get even this close to it anywhere but the end of the universe.

Today, one table in particular has caught his attention. Four girls are sitting at it - they're barely out of high school, at the most - and they keep glancing in his direction when they think he's not looking, and talking excitedly amongst themselves.

Eventually one of them makes eye contact with him. After doing a very good impression of a deer caught in a car's headlights, she says, "Um, are you the guy from Mark Cohen's movie?"

Angel smiles. "Which of the five?"

The girl's face lights up, and she turns back to her friends. "See, I told you it was him!"

"You say that like more than one of you was wearing skirts through the whole thing," one of the other girls says, and that starts them all talking.

"What was it like working with him?"

"Do you think he's going to put another movie out soon?"

"Is it true he got an offer to screenwrite one of those new Star Wars movies?"

"How'd you feel about him bumping off your character like that?"

It's one thing to hear from Mark that no one understands the movie wasn't fiction, but quite another to see the misinterpretation in practice. He sighs inwardly, gets up, and moves to a chair that's somewhat closer to their table.

"Slow the hell down, girls, this is a lot more complicated than you think. First things first, let me tell you something - that movie was not staged. I'd think 'from here on in, I shoot without a script' was enough of a clue, in that regard, but apparently not."

One of the girls raises an eyebrow. "If that's the case, you should be dead. What're you doing here, then?"

Angel sighs. He'd seen this one coming. "That's too complicated for here and now, and I doubt you'd believe me in any case. Basically, it's something of a limited-time offer."

"...That's an interesting trick."
(Fantastique, you came back from the dead, can you teach me how to do that?)
"What about the Star Wars thing?" one of the others finally says - the one who'd originally asked, as far as he'd been able to follow that barrage of questions.

"In a nutshell? Yes, it's true, and no, he's not going to do it. For a number of reasons."

The girl who asked appears to relax a bit, at that news. "Oh, good. I was worried he was going to end up with his name on some crap moneymaker of a movie, for a while there."

The girl who'd asked about the death thing rolls her eyes. "Oh, please, Erica, you don't have to be such a purist."

"Ewan McGregor or not, prequels this late after the original releases can't possibly be good news."

"Guys, fight it out later," one of their other friends says. "You're probably boring the hell our of our company."

Angel can't help but grin. "I've heard worse, honey, believe me. Oh, and another thing? When the movie about the bar comes out, that one's real too."

The peacemaker of the group narrows her eyes. "Bar?"

"At the end of the universe."

The girl's eyes go wide. "You're kidding."

"Why would I joke about something like that?" With that, he grins, and leaves the girls to their own devices. He can hear them trying to stay quiet and be ridiculously excited at the same time; to their credit, it's almost working.

He'll have to make sure to tell Mark about this one.

The door opens into a back hallway, between two clearly labeled restrooms and near a stairwell. This must be the place, then.
There's a spot near the stairs that looks safe enough to leave his bag, for now; no point in carrying it around for no good reason, after all. At the moment, Angel's got more important things to do.
First on the list: finding Collins.

(Written sometime between Monday and now...)

So. Seems Mark and I are both bloody lunatics, in layman's terms. I'm not sure which of us had more common sense, since he flat-out turned down the big name scholarship while I took the opportunity and wound up scrapping it, but still. Most people'd think you'd have to be crazy to do either.
What exactly is it about creativity that makes people want to gather it into large groups and then suck all the life out of it? Jealousy, maybe? Lack of imagination to find a more impressive way to 'take care of the problem'? (Not realizing it's not that much of a problem in the first place?)
Probably, it's some combination of the above. Still, the fact that I'm starting to wonder if there's some sort of conspiracy going on here is saying something by itself. I don't do conspiracies.
Going to have to think on this one some more, it looks like.