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family of more traditional models: short, slim, curly-haired, olive-skinned.)
     
    After four months in Hungary , Scott blundered into his predictable but somehow always surprising moment of sentimental weakness. Late one night, bothered that his mother might suffer even more regret than he would wish for her, he sent to California a postcard with a picture of Castle Hill in Buda and the text Am here for a while teaching. Hope you are all okay. S. He regretted it as soon as the card schussed into the little red mailbox, but he consoled himself that he had given no address, and surely even they would be able to read between the lines. His carefully constructed world was still safe.
     
    Except that two months later, to Scott's right sits today's fifth competitor, his newly arrived and disproportionately loathed younger brother, John.
     
    riiuuuc   i
     
    ROUND ONE
     
    "WELL,    LET'S    SEE    WHAT'S    WHAT   THEN,"    SAID   THE    INVENTOR    AND    UNDIS-
     
    puted master of Sincerity. John Price watched Charles stretch his arms around the back of his chair, lace his fingers together, and lean back slightly to permit the lowering sun to touch his face. A symbolic opening of the game, John noted, as if Gabor were holding himself up to the light, an illustration of candor. And yet, it was an intentionally symbolic action. Indeed, John thought he could see that Charles liked the idea of his competitors/friends noticing the symbolism but then being smart enough to reject it as not only a mere symbol but also an inaccurate one, a silent trick, since he surely did not believe that turning his face to the sun demonstrated any actual candor. And, John thought further, perhaps this was a small compliment as well, since Charles trusted that you were clever enough not to take the gesture at face value but to know that the act of intentionally symbolically revealing himself was meant to show that he was not revealing himself. Alternately, Charles might have been stretching.
     
    Charles changed directions, leaned into the cluttered table, placed an elbow on its marble. He looked sideways at Mark and his brown eyes relaxed into a misty warmth. "To be perfectly honest, Mark," Charles said, "I sometimes envy your passion for your research." His gaze rested on Pay ton a few seconds longer, the desire to say more wrestling with the regret of having said so much. A wistful half-smile pulled up one side of his elegant mouth. His eyebrows climbed one carefully calibrated step toward the stark-white parting of his jet-black hair. "Your turn, Mark."
     
    John had only been in Budapest two days, sleeping on his brother's floor, meandering alone through the city with a new and already out-of-date map, occasionally being introduced halfheartedly to Scott's friends. John had only just met this group, but even he suspected that Charles had no envy of Mark's research. Gabor had essentially just told the Canadian that he had zero interest in his life's work, had just allowed himself the luxury of saying the obvious: To a venture capitalist, Mark's scholarly, slobbery obsessions with the past were laughable. And Mark had even begun to laugh.
     
    Mark grew distracted by a waitress passing close to the table. Scott re-
     
    minded him, "It's your turn. We're going counterclockwise." And Mark made a small gesture of having his attention brought back to the game despite himself, a little play of candor that struck John as amateurish compared to the mae-stro's opening.
     
    "You know," Mark said in a Canadian-accented singsong, apparently somewhat surprised to hear himself admit it, "I'm actually beginning to warm up to those boots," referring to the knee-high open-toe lace-up white-vinyl go-go boots that graced the feet of all Gerbeaud waitresses, women from eighteen to sixty-five, who were also condemned to yellow miniskirts and white lace aprons. All five of the Westerners were baffled that people a few months into post-Communism