Without a cut the wrinkled, weathered landscape of age has appeared around her eyes. But the eyes themselves are still the same. "After all these years, I can still feel it closing around my neck like a dog collar. I can still feel its weight. If you could have felt it, not just seen it..."
"That's the general idea, my dear," Mia told her.
"So let me get this right. You were gonna kill yourself by jumping off the Titanic?" Chase guffaws. "That's great!"
"Chase..." Tyler warns.
But Mia laughs along with Chase.
"All you had to do was wait two days!" Chase says, still laughing. Tyler, standing out of Mia's sightline, checks his watch. Hours have passed. This process is taking too long.
"Mia, tell us more about the diamond. What did Shiba do with it after that?"
"I'm afraid I'm feeling a little tired, Mr. Navarro."
Shelbg picks up the cue and starts to wheel her out.
"Wait!" Tyler calls out, "Can you give us something go on, here. Like who had access to the safe. What about this Mentor Ji guy? The valet. Did he have the combination?"
"That's enough," Shelby tells him and takes Mia out. Mia's old hand reappears at the doorway in a frail wave goodbye.
As the big hydraulic jib swings, one of the Mir subs out over the water that night. Tyler walks as he talks with Koda, the partners' rep. They weave among deck cranes, launch crew, sub maintenance guys.
"The partners are pissed," Koda reports.
"Casey, buy me time. I need time," Tyler replies.
"We're running thirty thousand a day, and we're six days over. I'm telling you what they're telling me. The hand is on the plug. It's starting to pull."
"Well you tell the hand I need another two days! Koda, Koda, Koda...we're close! I smell it. I smell ice. She had the diamond on...now we just have to find out where it wound up. I just gotta work her a bit more. Okay?"
Tyler turns and sees Shelby standing behind him. She has overheard the past part of his dialogue with Koda. He goes to her and hustles her away from Koda, toward a quiet spot on the deck. "Hey, Shelby. I need to talk to you for a second."
"Don't you mean work me?" She asks, narrowing her eyes.
"Look, I'm running out of time. I need your help," he begs.
"I'm not going to help you browbeat my hundred and one year old grandmother. I came down here to tell you to back off," she answers.
Tyler gives a look of undisguised desperation. "Shelby...you gotta understand something. I've bet it all to find the Heart of the Ocean. I've got all my dough tied up in this thing. My wife even divorced me over this hunt. I need what's locked inside your grandma's memory." He holds out his hand. "You see this? Right here?"
She looks at his hand, palm up. Empty. Cupped, as if around an imaginary shape.
"What?"
"That's the shape my hand's gonna be when I hold that thing. You understand? I'm not leaving here without it."
"Look, Tyler, she's going to do this her own way, in her own time. Don't forget, she contacted you. She's out here for her own reasons, God knows what they are," Shelby explains.
"Maybe she wants to make peace with the past," Tyler suggests.
"What past? She has never once, not once, ever said a word about being on the Titanic until two days ago."
"Then we're all meeting your grandmother for the first time," Tyler murmurs.
Shelby looks at him hard. "You think she was really there?"
"Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'm a believer. She was there."
Chase starts the tape recorder. Mia is gazing at the screen, seeing the live feed from the wreck. Metalhead is moving along the starboard side of the hull, heading aft. The rectangular windows of A deck march past on the right.
"The next day, Saturday, I remember thinking how the sunlight felt."
From the rustling hulk to the gleaming new Titanic in 1912, passing the end of the enclosed promenade just as Amy walked into the sunlight right in front of her. She was stunningly dressed and walking with purpose.
"As if I hadn't felt the sun in years."
It was Saturday, April 13th, 1912. Mia unlatched the gate to go down into third class. The steerage men on the deck stop what they were doing, staring at her.
The social center of steerage life. It was stark by comparison to the opulence of first class, but was a loud, boisterous place. There were mothers with babies, kids running between the benches yelling in several languages and being scolded in several more. There were old women yelling, men playing chess, girls doing needlepoint and reading dime novels. There was even an upright piano and Antonio Grazia was noodling around it.
Three boys, shrieking and shouting, were scrambling around chasing a rat under the benches, trying to whomp it with a shoe and causing general havoc. Kevin was playing with 5 year old Marie, drawing funny faces together in his sketchbook.
Mike was struggling to get a conversation going with an attractive American girl, Emily, sitting with her family at a table across the room.
"No Spanish? Some little English?"
"No, no. Norwegian. Only."
Mona's eyes was caught by something. Raph looked, did a take...and Leo, curious, followed their gaze to see...
Mia, coming towards them. The activity in the room stopped...a hush fell. Mia felt suddenly self-conscious as the steerage passengers stared openly at this princess, some with resentment, others with awe. She spotted Kevin and gave a little smile, walking straight to him. He rose to meet her, smiling.
"Hello Kevin."
Mike and Antonio were floored. It was like the slipper fitting Cinderella.
"Hello again," Kevin greeted.
"Could I speak to you in private?" Mia asked.
"Uh, yes. Of course. After you." He motioned her ahead and followed. Kevin glanced over his shoulder, one brow raised, as he walked out with her leaving a stunned silence.
Mia and Kevin walked side by side. They passed people reading and talking in steamer chairs, some of whom glanced curiously at the mismatched couple. He felt out of place in his rough clothes. They were both awkward, for different reasons as they walked in complete silence.
"Well, I've been on my own since I was 15, since my folks died. And I had no brothers or sisters or close kin in that part of the country. So I lit on out of there and I haven't been back since. You could just call me a tumbleweed blowing in the wind," they both chuckled. "Well, Amelia, we've walked about a mile around this boat deck and...chewed over how great the weather's been and how I grew up, but I reckon that's not why you came to talk to me, is it?"
"Mr. Douglas, I-"
"Kevin," he corrected.
"Kevin," she noted, "I want to thank you for what you did. Not just for...for pulling me back, but for your discretion."
"You're welcome, Ms. Watanabe," Kevin said, his mind filled with a million questions.
"Oh God, to be honest, I prefer Mia," she told him.
"Alright. Mia," he grinned.
"Look, I know what you must be thinking! Poor little rich girl. What does she know about misery?"
"No, no...that's not what I was thinking. What I was thinking was...what could have happened to hurt this girl so much she thought she had no way out."
"Well, I...it was everything. It was my whole world and...all the people in it," she stood at the rail, Kevin joining her. "And the inertia in my life, plunging ahead and me powerless to stop it," she showed Kevin her engagement ring."
"God, look at that thing. You would have gone straight to the bottom," Mia joked.
"500 invitations have gone out. All of Philadelphia society will be there. And all the while I feel I'm...standing in the middle of a crowded room, screaming at the top of my lungs and no one even looks up," she explained.
"Do you love him?" He asked.
"...Pardon me?" She looked appalled.
"Do you love him?" He repeated.
"You're being very rude. You shouldn't be asking me this," she retorted.
"Well, it's a simple question. Do you love the guy or not?" He pressed and she scoffed in in disbelief.
"This is not a suitable conversation," she replied.
"Why can't you just answer the question?" Kevin laughed a little.
She laughed, placing a hand on her head as she moved away from him. "This is absurd. You don't know me and I don't know you and we are not having this conversation at all. You are rude and uncouth and presumptuous and...I am leaving now. Leo, Mr. Hamato, it's been a pleasure. I sought you out to thank you and now I have thanked you," she shook his hand.
"And you've insulted me," he added as he shook her hand back.
"Well, you deserved it."
"Right."
"Right." She kept shaking his hand, however.
"I thought you were leaving."
"I am," she let go of his hand, laughing to herself as she turned around. She turned back to him. "You are so annoying!"
He laughed but then she realized something. "Wait. I don't have to leave," she walked back to him. "This is my part of the ship. You leave!" She pointed right.
"Oh ho ho, well well well. Now who's being rude?" He replied. She turned her head, her mouth open in shock as she laughed before noticing his sketchbook. "What is this stupid thing you're carrying around?" She snatched it and opened it. "So what are you, an artist or something?" She looked at his sketches. "Well...These are rather good." She sat down on a deck chair. He sat down next to her. "They're very good, actually." She looked at a sketch of a woman breast feeding her baby.
"Kevin, this is exquisite work."
"Ah, they didn't think too much of them in old Paree," he said.
"Paris? You do get around for a p-" she stopped, stuttering. "Well, uh...a-a person of limited means."
"Go on. A poor guy. You can say it," he chuckled.
She looked at a sketch of a naked woman with a cigarette in her mouth. "Well, well, well. And these were drawn from life?"
Kevin nodded and Mia covered up the sketches as someone passed by. God knows what would happen if he saw her looking at nude drawings.
"Well, that's one of the good things about Paris. Lots of girls are willing to take their clothes off." She smiled at him a little, laughing.
She turned the page. "You liked this woman. You used her several times," she pointed out.
"Well, she had beautiful hands, you see?" They looked at a drawing of the woman's hands.
"I think you must've had a love affair with her," she joked.
"No, no, no. Just with her hands. She was a one-legged prostitute," she turned to him. "See?" He turned the page and she gave a slightly appalled look.
"O-Oh." They both laughed.
"She had a good sense of humor though," Kevin replied and she looked at him. "Oh, and this lady," he turned to the page to a sketch of a woman in jewelry and a coat. "She used to sit at this bar every night, wearing every piece of jewelry she owned just waiting for her long lost love. We called her Madame Bijoux. See, her clothes are all moth-eaten."
She started to see him in a new light..."Well, you have a gift, Leo. You do. You see people."
"I see you," he said.
She gave an amused smile. "And?"
"You wouldn't have jumped."
Her smile faltered as she looked at him, giving him a piercing gaze.