Upon returning home that same evening, Nick Carraway finds every light in Gatsby's house next door turned on. Jay walks across his lawn and approaches Nick, explaining simply that he has been looking through some of the rooms. His meeting with Daisy will be soon and this odd behavior is due to nervousness. Jay urges Nick to go with him to Coney Island or at least to his swimming pool. Nick refuses since it is already dark outside and, knowing Gatsby's motive is to hear when the meeting with Daisy will be arranged, Nick says outright he will ask her to come to his home for tea in two days. Jay replies absently that he'll have Nick's grass cut due to its raggedness compared with the well-kept expanse of his own estate next door. This matter settled and Gatsby still in a restless state of mind, he proposes to Nick that he could help him to earn some extra money on the side, via a "rather confidential sort of thing." Recalling his lunch in New York with Wolfsheim and all this shady talk of a business "gonnegtion," Nick replies that he is too busy with his current job already. At that, the conversation ends.
The following day, Carraway calls Daisy to invite her to tea. He advises her not to bring Tom Buchanan and she agrees to go that next day. Before Daisy arrives, Gatsby again is struck by pangs of nervousness, declaring that she is not going to come although the time of her arrival (four o'clock) hasn't come yet. This behavior is a stark contrast to the cool, collected Gatsby observed earlier. He has much at stake, for it is the desire to reunite with Daisy that has driven him to buy his mansion and earn so much money in hopes of impressing her. Finally she arrives in the midst of a rain shower outside and, upon entering, Gatsby is nowhere to be seen until Nick finds that he had gone outside the back exit and is now knocking on the front door looking completely out of sorts. "Gatsby, pale as death, with his hands plunged like weights in his coat pockets, was standing in a puddle of water glaring tragically into my eyes." Chapter 5, pg. 86. Here he is reduced, because of this woman, into a shivering, cowardly creature, though he still tries to proceed with the meeting. There is an eerie silence when the two see one another again. They struggle for words and to fight the understandable awkwardness of the situation. Even though they had been in love years before, Daisy is now married to Tom, has given birth to a daughter, and was quite settled down. For Gatsby however it seems that little has changed and he has clung to the memory of Daisy all the time they have been apart. In his nervousness, Jay becomes clumsy and nearly breaks a clock on Nick's mantelpiece. Being his usual thoughtful self, he apologizes.
Finally a worried Gatsby runs out into the kitchen and dubs the whole thing "a terrible, terrible mistake" while Nick tells him to calm down, reminding him that he's being rude since Daisy is sitting all alone in the living room. Whereas before Jay had tried to be the man in charge, the man who knew best, a man of superior experience, here he appears weak and wavering. He at last returns to visit with her as Nick goes out the back door into the rain. The same disconnection that has afflicted him throughout the story is as strong as ever, for these two people are using his house for a matter in which he takes little interest. He stares at Gatsby's mansion while standing beneath a tree in the rain, commenting on its history. It had belonged to a brewer who had wanted the roofs of the homes around him to be thatched in straw to recreate a medieval scene where his mansion would be like a castle surrounded by serfs. His children sold the house as soon as he had died, "with the black wreath still on the door. Americans, while occasionally willing to be serfs, have always been obstinate about being peasantry." Chapter 5, pg. 89. Nick notices something about this American lifestyle with its emphasis on money; Gatsby needed glamour and riches to attract Daisy to him, for it was these things which had drawn her to Tom Buchanan. Despite Tom's mistresses, she remains married to him and feigns contentment. Myrtle Wilson too is drawn to Tom due to his wealth, despite the devotion of her husband.
The rain outside has finally stopped and Nick goes back to his living room to discover Gatsby's nervousness is gone. Whatever awkwardness the two had felt earlier has been cleared up. Jay invites them over to his mansion and as Daisy goes upstairs to wash her face, Gatsby stares out at the magnificence of his home, hoping that this shall impress her. He next mentions that his money had come from the drug and oil businesses although he is not doing either currently. Mention of this contradicts his claim earlier that his money had been inherited although he quickly covers this up by saying he had lost the inherited money in the war and had to rebuild his wealth. Yet the casualness with which he mentions drugs and oil puts the two nearly on an equal level, as if business is business regardless of what is being bought or sold, or whether the business is legal or not. Daisy returns and the three go over to the mansion. Inside, as Daisy stares at the richness of Gatsby's home and caresses the fabric of his imported shirts, she finally breaks down and begins to cry into them saying "'It makes me sad because I've never seen such - such beautiful shirts before.'" Chapter 5, pg. 94. The wealth by which she is surrounded seems to have overpowered her; she did not cry when she laid eyes upon the face of Jay Gatsby at Nick's home a short time before, but is driven to emotion and tears upon seeing the beauty of his material possessions.
Having won her adoration once more after the grand tour of his home, Gatsby becomes more emotional and mentions to Daisy that "'[i]f it wasn't for the mist we could see your home across the bay....You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock.'" Chapter 5, pg. 94. Newspaper clippings are shown to Daisy pointing out that Gatsby had never let go of her and had pursued her for the five years they have been separated. Jay explains that a picture of an older man in a yachting costume, Dan Cody, used to be his best friend although he had died. A phone call pertaining to Gatsby's business dealings interrupts the discussion, and afterwards a boarder at the house, Ewing Klipspringer, is called upon to play the piano for the two lovebirds despite his complaints that he is tired. Like Nick, he is simply expected to perform a task and is not asked.
Nick wishes to leave but the two insist that he remain with them. Gatsby goes downstairs to the music room where Ewing plays the piano and sings The Love Nest and another song: "'One thing's sure and nothing's surer/ The rich get richer and the poor get - children./ In the meantime,/ In between time--'.... [In their rapture] [t]hey had forgotten me....Gatsby didn't know me now at all....they looked back at me, remotely, possessed by intense life." Chapter 5, pg. 96-7. The song is appropriate enough to express Nick's observations about these people's obsession with wealth. As he walks out to leave while Daisy and Gatsby dance together, Carraway is yet again on the outside and disconnected. Daisy and Gatsby embrace and are caught in rapture of one another while Nick is set apart. Finally Nick returns to his own house.
