Silas works at a social-service agency. He sits inside a cubicle, behind a metal desk with a simulated-wood surface. One by one, people — mostly old women, but some old men, too — come and sit on a metal folding chair across the desk from Silas, where they weep and whine and struggle to maintain their dignity and finally grow vexed and demand their Social Security checks.
On his first day, Linda, the receptionist, took Silas to a bare, carpetless room at the end of the hall. “This is where we go to cry,” she said, her voice echoing into the empty room. “Or, if you’re too manly to cry, you can tear your hair out in here.”
