A review by the_lobrarian
Void Star by Zachary Mason

"Even now we're in your memory," Philip says. "There behind your elegantly marred forehead." The daylight is gone, now, the guards on the street invisible, no sign of the outside but the drumming of the rain. The other tables have emptied and filled and in the candlelight everyone looks happy, like their lives are replete, and there's a woman, blonde and ripe, who will run to fat soon but is, for now, beautiful, standing in the doorway, smiling radiantly at someone inside, looking like she's just thought of something to say. 
"Like her," he says, "Look at her. It's never occurred to her to question that her story is the center of the narrative. But only this fragment of her life will survive."
"If you call it survival," she says, chin cupped on hand, contemplating her gin and tonic, which Philip has always called the blood of dead empire. "It's more like imprisonment, under glass, forever. Like Nimue and Merlin. Waters may rise, and cities crumble, but I'll always have this light on your face and the water running down the windows."
"I'm happy here," he says. "Let's never leave."
"Done," she says. "I'll always be here with you."
"Strange to think of the boy I was, still with you. I suppose you're there too, at least since you were twelve. How strange it must be for you, how your personal history is a crystalline museum, until the point where, I suppose, it must darken." 
She imagines the severe boy he'd been standing behind her in his second-hand pea coat torn at the shoulder, how he'd be moved by the light, disdainful of their consumption, how he'd stare in bemused dismay at the elegant man across from her. She takes a sip of wine.
"Yes?" he says.
She says, "You're standing right behind me, in judgement, and you have no mercy."
"I'd expect no less," he says, seeming pleased. "Tell him not to work so hard. Or maybe harder. Another drink?"
"It's different with me," she says. "I don't really have past selves. It's all one big present. There is nothing of me that fades."
"Nor suffers a sea change," he says. "But isn't that awful? Every little wound open forever?"
She smiles, makes a vague, expansive gesture, her hands tracing circles in the air.
He says, "I'd forgotten how rewarding it can be to get you drunk."
"I wish I could remember the future," she says, resting her forehead briefly on her palm, and if the other patrons see, well, let them, they'll barely remember it. "It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards. I wish I could just slip up and down the timeline as I pleased. It's almost what I do anyway."
.... 
"I know," he says gently, and then, "But you'll never lose me. I'll always be right here."
A black wind rises and sweeps through the room, extinguishing the candles and swallowing the voices and the echoes and every particle of light and carrying them back down into her other memory's stillness, leaving her in silence and solitude and the blood-red dark behind her eyelids, and she's tempted to remain here in this peace, but then, with just the slightest exertion of her will, the candles are flickering again, and once again the restaurant is full, and there's Philip sitting across from her.
"Even now we're in your memory," Philip says. "There behind your elegantly marred forehead." The daylight is gone, now, the guards on the street invisible, no sign of the outside but the drumming of the rain. The other tables have emptied and filled and in the candlelight everyone looks happy, like their lives are replete, and there's a woman, blonde and ripe, who will run to fat soon but is, for now, beautiful, standing in the doorway, smiling radiantly at someone inside, looking like she's just thought of something to say. 
A hand on her wrist. She opens her eyes, finds their waiter, worried, looking down at her. The restaurant is empty, the candle a crater of cold wax. The waiter says he is sorry, may he call her a cab, is her boyfriend coming back, in any case they're closed. 
- p. 261-269 [eBook]