Eager to find out the truth for himself, Gabriel catches a flight to Wisconsin, and does some amateur sleuthing to find Donna and Pete. He finds her, and experiences other surprises. According to Donna, Pete contracted AIDS while being sexually exploited by his birth parents. But, Pete's editor, it turns out, has never met the boy; and Donna repeatedly insists that Pete's bad health rules out visits. Not wanting to give up, Gabe treks around to the city's various hospitals, hoping to find the boy; alas he doesn't find the answers he needs.

While Donna is looking less credible by the minute, “The Night Listener” becomes somewhat of a horror film: Donna, in one scene, asks Gabriel whether he likes the sweater she's knitted for herself and when he doesn't respond, the silence hurts her feelings terribly, causing a slightly crazed reaction.

This troubling story, based on a semi-autobiographical novel by San Francisco’s Armistead Maupin (better known as the author of Tales of the City and the PBS miniseries), is both appropriately unsettling and alluring but leaves us slightly queasy. Nonetheless, at a quick 82-minute running time, it does manage to hold our attention. Any longer and we'd get impatient. - A.J.