Third-Eye just shakes his head and walks heavily back with pursed lips, his eyes wandering off on their separate paths so that it is not apparent to anybody within the foward 180 degrees of Third-Eye's approach where he going, what he is looking at, thinking about, or doing, or meaning. He stops in front of Mad Jack, turns to face him, but appears to be looking back at Delaney with the left eye while looking at the entrance door off to the the other side with the right eye.

"It's a joke," he tells Mad Jack.

"What!?" booms Mad Jack.

"What?" Delaney yells touchily, seeing Third-Eye's left glassy orb boring back at him, and thinking, naturally, that the bartender and the wise-guy are talking about him. But the two ignore Delaney.

"It's a joke," repeats Third-Eye to Mad Jack. "Anubis' boat is just a beat-up old lifeboat from some tramp steamer that looks like its a bunch of steel plates stappled together over a paper mache hull. Forget about it, it's a joke."

 

"I'm not laughing," squints Mad Jack sending a dagger of a glance over to Delaney.

"Laugh," commands Third Eye the bartender in his capacity as God. "It's a joke. Don't cause any trouble on my shift. Come back tommorrow night and throttle him. Then it ain't on my conscience. Forget about it. Drink, " counsels Third Eye.

"Alright, alright," Mad Jack snorts trying to laugh, "I'm drinking, I'm drinking."

He turns his back to Delaney just as a fat gray-whiskered man in a tight blue workshirt comes into the bar and takes a seat a little ashen-faced next to Mad Jack.

"Howdy, there, Squatbender," nods Third-Eye, "what can I set you up with? You look a little under the weather, there, feelin' alright?"

"Gimme three shots of your fieriest whiskey," the man says with words chopped sharp as pieces of flint. His hands grasp the bar ahead of him like it is a gunwale of a tossing boat. Mad Jack smiles knowlingly and starts to say something, but stops himself and watches the ensuing scene. Third-Eye sets down the shot glasses three in a row and fills them to the brim with gold-amber liquid, squinting with tilted head and his lower listing eye shut, and which makes his other eye seem like it is staring at the ceiling.