John Cheever's story "The Swimmer" starts off reasonably enough. The protagonist, Neddy Merrill, is lounging about the swimming pool at the home of his friends, the Westerhazys, when a peculiar thought occurs to him: there are so many swimming pools between his current location and his own home eight miles away that he can literally swim home -- with a few jogs across back yards and intervening parkways. However, what begins as a whimsical exercise …showed first 75 words of 718 total…

…showed last 75 words of 718 total…a woman with whom he has been having an affair; she likewise alludes to the fact that he's borrowed money from her, and rudely refuses to give him any more. Finally reaching his own house in a state of complete exhaustion, he tries the garage doors, but "rust came off the handles onto his hands." The house is empty; his family is gone; and at last we learn how long Neddy's swim has actually been.