Birthday Girl

Birthday Girl is a beguiling, exquisitely satisfying short story. A taste of master storytelling, published to celebrate Murakami''s 70th birthday.

She waited on tables as usual that day, her twentieth birthday. She always worked Fridays, but if things had gone according to plan on that particular Friday, she would have had the night off.

One rainy Tokyo night, a waitress''s uneventful twentieth bir...