Hi Brian,
Any easy fixes?
I'd guess the easy fix is upgrade to VMware Fusion 6, but that's not a free fix. Besides that I've not heard about this particular issue from people with VMware Fusion 4 and mavericks before so it might not address it. You can however try a 30 day free trial to see if it helps. If you don't upgrade the virtual hardware you can switch back to VMware Fusion 4 after testing it and don't like it.
What I've seen in the past with VMware Fusion 4.x was that the VMware NAT service used up a lot of CPU, in that case I'd either restarted the VMware NAT service (sorry not having the correct steps on that here anymore) or connect your guest to bridged network.
hope this helps,
--
Wil