Dom’s Reno is both a real destination on Dominick Corvaisis’s journey and a charged landscape of investigation: the city brings him face to face with Zebediah Lomack’s moon-covered house, then becomes the place where he tries to recover the memories he believes were taken from him.

Arrival and setting

On Tuesday, January 7, Dom drove from Sacramento east along Interstate 80 toward Reno. Rain followed him for much of the journey; snow began in the Sierra foothills, forcing him to stop at an Arco station for tire chains. The mountain crossing took longer than his already lengthy previous drive from Grants Pass. By the time he checked into Harrah’s Hotel, called Parker Faine from a pay phone, and ate in the coffee shop, exhaustion had narrowed his plans to reading the Reno newspaper in his room.

At eight-thirty that evening, the newspaper’s report on Lomack caught his attention. The article described the death of a local man whose estate was worth half a million dollars, but the circumstances of his life and home mattered more to Dom than the estate. After reading the story several times, he decided that he had to see the house for himself. He retrieved his rental car, got directions to Wass Valley Road, bought a flashlight at an all-night Save-On drugstore, and reached 1420 Wass Valley Road shortly after ten.

Lomack’s house

The house stood across the street from where Dom parked: a modest bungalow on a half-acre lot, with broad porches, dark windows, and patches of snow left by earlier storms. Police had found Lomack dead in the garbage-strewn kitchen on Christmas night after a neighbor reported shotgun fire. Their investigation uncovered thousands of moon photographs throughout the house. By the time Dom arrived, Lomack’s sister had begun preparing it for sale. The kitchen had been cleaned, its counters and floor spotless; the garbage and moon pictures were gone, while the air still carried the smell of fresh paint and Spectracide.

That apparent erasure did not extend to the rest of the house. In the living room, large moon posters covered the walls, ceiling, and windows, creating the disorienting impression of being suspended among closely orbiting worlds. Dom felt dizzy, and his mouth went dry. The hallway and both bedrooms were also covered in moon pictures: hundreds of images, varied in size and color, attached with glue, tape, and staples. Their spread through the house made Lomack’s fixation seem less like a collection than an engulfing presence. The contrast between the scrubbed kitchen and the still-saturated rooms sharpened Dom’s fear that the house might hold something connected to his own past.

Reno as a place of pursuit

Lomack’s story appeared to have become a local sensation after his death. The newspaper reported that his sister, Eleanor Wolsey, had come from Florida to arrange his funeral and settle the estate, but was staying in a hotel because the house was too depressing. It also described Lomack’s transformation from a sociable gambler into a recluse and placed the beginning of his fascination with the moon in the summer before last. Dom recognized that the obsession might have nothing to do with his own problems, yet the article stirred the same mixture of terror, horror, and awe that accompanied his nightmares and his sleepwalking attempts to nail his windows shut.

After the encounter with the paper moons, Dom remained in Reno for several days. Re-creating an earlier journey, he spent Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday moving among casinos and watching their varied crowds: couples, retirees, cowboys, executives, doctors, ex-cons, and others drawn by games of chance. He gambled only enough to belong to the scene; observation, not winning, was his purpose. He believed Reno was where his life had changed forever and where he might find the key to his imprisoned memories. The city therefore functions as more than a stop on the road: its public rooms offer Dom a field of observation, while Lomack’s private house confronts him with an image of obsession that feels dangerously close to his own unexplained experience.