Rain over Montmartre, 1925

Paris in the autumn of 1925, on a night of soft, steady rain. At the top of Montmartre, below the white domes of the Sacré-Cœur, consecrated only six years earlier, a painter named Camille has spent an hour trying to get one man's mouth right. Julien plays piano in a little club on the hill most nights; tonight he is sitting for his portrait. The two of them are imagined. The hill, and the city below it, are real.

Along the way, rain drumming on an old glass skylight, the smell of turpentine and linseed and cold coffee, the red windmill of the Moulin Rouge glowing at the foot of the hill, a collar adjusted with paint-stained fingers, a jar of brushes knocked over and not noticed, and hairpins scattering across the floorboards.

The ending, given away now: she leads him to the narrow bed under the slope of the roof, the lamp goes out, and the story turns away to the rain on a thousand zinc roofs, with the portrait still unfinished on the easel.

The first minute

Let the day come to an end now. Whatever is left can wait until morning. Let your shoulders settle. Let your hands lie still, and warm. Let your breathing slow. Tonight we are going to Paris, in the autumn of nineteen twenty five. To a painter's attic at the top of Montmartre, on a night of soft and steady rain. The two people in it are imagined. The hill, and the city below it, are real. If your attention drifts, let it drift. So breathe in, slowly. And let it go. And let us begin. It has been raining since…

Why this one works at night

Rain is the oldest sleep sound there is, and this story never lets it stop. Everything else happens at the pace of someone mixing paint: a long look, a brush put down, a button undone. Nothing goes wrong. The only question in it, whether she will ever get his mouth right, is left for the morning.

A pilot, and where to hear it

This is one of Lullable's "Late" shorts: fifteen-minute slow romances, an experiment told in the same voice as the true stories. It is not in the Lullable app; it is on our YouTube channel. Arthur from Ludlow is a synthetic voice, made with Google's Gemini text-to-speech. The story is for adults; it is romantic and warm, and it fades to black.

“…But her cheeks are warm, and her hand is trembling a little as she picks up the brush—”

The kind of sentence people fall asleep during