these are fancy leftovers,” Riley said with a grin.
“These were supposed to be for…” I trailed off, then shook my head. “I’m reheating the leftovers in the microwave. They’re not that fancy. And I’d rather share this nice wine than drink them by myself. Bonny doesn’t drink.”
“How about you open both bottles?” Riley suggested. “I don’t know much about wine, but I’ll try each.”
“Both it is!”
I quickly cleaned off the kitchen table so there was room for the three of us and all the food. It wasn’t as picturesque as it had been yesterday, but the two men praised the feast.
“You had all this in your fridge?” Harper asked.
“I made it yesterday.”
“By yourself?” Riley said skeptically. “For yourself?”
“It wasn’t a big deal,” I said bashfully.
Riley raised his glass of white wine. “Before we eat, let’s toast to Happy Bones and all the money we raised today!”
“Cheers,” I said, and we leaned across the table to touch glasses. Riley stared intensely into my eyes as our glasses clinked.
“I’m not being weird,” he quickly said. “It’s actually customary to make eye contact while toasting. It’s bad luck not to.”
Harper sipped his wine and said, “I seem to remember it being a more specific form of bad luck.”
Riley laughed nervously.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“It’s nothing,” Riley said.
I looked at Harper for the answer.
“A commonly held superstition is that you’ll suffer seven years of bad sex if you break eye contact during a toast.”
“Oh!”
Harper blushed, but grinned widely. “It’s Riley’s favorite fun-fact to tell people.”
“I didn’t want to be crude,” he muttered into his wine. “Forget all of that. The important thing is that we raised a lot of money today.”
“Quite a lot,” Harper agreed.
“We should count it up after dinner,” Riley said. “To see who won.”
“It’s not a competition,” I said.
“Everything is a competition to Riley,” Harper said while serving himself from the turkey dish. “But he probably earned more than me. I am far more careful with my wrapping jobs, which likely resulted in fewer numbers overall.”
“If you do such an amazing job, then you would have gotten bigger donations.” Riley looked at me and shook his head. “He knows he lost so he’s already making excuses.”
“I am just saying that quantity is not as important as quality,” Harper replied.
Our conversation died off as we dug into the food. The only words that came out of their mouths for the next few minutes were compliments about the turkey, stuffing, and gravy.
“We had a small Thanksgiving among the Park Rangers, but it wasn’t nearly this good,” Riley said.
“What does being a Park Ranger entail?” I asked. “Like, what’s your typical day like?”
Harper reached for the bottle of wine and began topping off everyone’s glasses. “I work in the Grand Canyon Village. I answer questions from tourists and explain the geology of the canyon. I’m more of an educator than anything.”
“That’s on the south rim, right?” I asked. “Do you ever go down into the canyon itself?”
“Rarely. I leave that to him.”
Riley nodded and swallowed a forkful of mashed potatoes.
“Have you ever hiked down to the bottom?” I asked.
“Oh yeah,” Riley replied. “I do that pretty much every day I work.”
“Really? Isn’t that, like, eight miles each way?”
“Closer to ten,” he said. “Nineteen round-trip. I work at the Phantom Ranch Canteen, which is just across the Colorado River. I hike down with a pack full of supplies on my back. That restocks the canteen, and then I carry trash and other refuse back up.”
I sipped my wine. “I thought they had mules for that. Are you pulling my leg?”
“We use mules too, but every backpack full of supplies helps,” he replied. “But my job isn’t to just carry supplies. I’m also checking on hikers and tourists along the way. Hiking down into the canyon can be dangerous, even for the most physically-fit people.”
“I would imagine. One wrong step and you could go falling…”
“Actually, falling isn’t that much of a risk,” Riley explained. “The real danger is heat and dehydration. The temperature increases about ten degrees every two thousand feet of descent. Let’s say it’s eighty-five degrees on the south rim. If you’re a tourist, you feel great! It’s a beautiful day! So you hike down the Bright Angel trail. By the time you get to the three-mile resthouse, it’s a hundred degrees. And at the base of the canyon? It’s one-fifteen.”
“We call it the death zone,” Harper chimed in. “It’s easy to hike down into the death zone, but climbing back out is