Rosalyn (Rosie) Gerhart~~District 11

Due to her profession, Rosalyn Gerhart has become a major sex symbol in District 11 and she most definitely looks the part. The curvy teenager is about five foot three and she weighs just over a hundred pounds. Rosie holds her head high and carries herself with grace and dignity. Even though her girls love makeup, Rosie’s smooth, dark skin doesn’t need anything artificial to be gorgeous and glamorous. She dresses very maturely for a girl who isn’t yet twenty as she typically dons black or white dresses that show just enough to get attention without being too revealing. Rosie’s nails are long and always bright red like her namesake flower.

Even though to most people in the district, the bubbly hotel owner is the paragon of physical perfection, beauty is a tall order for Ms. Gerhart. Probably the easiest thing to mask is her feet. Unlike most people, Rosie has a bad case of polydactyly. Her left foot has a stubby, discolored sixth toe right after her pinky. Rosie is rather self-conscious about her benign condition, so sandals are always out of the question. She also has to deal with her tangled rats’ nest of curly black hair. Rosalyn’s curls are so stubborn and thick that it takes her almost an hour a day to tame her mane into the manageable and stylish braids that have become her signature look. Rosie dreads taking the braids out to wash her hair. The hardest imperfection for the cosmetically minded entrepreneur to deal with is her scaly skin. Like her father and almost everybody else on his side of the family, Rosie is plagued with itchy, unsightly, snakeskin along her ribs and when the weather is dry, her arms. She has tried every poultice and cream that the local apothecaries can whip up, but nothing has healed her flaky flesh.

Fortunately, the face of Rosalyn Gerhart is not afflicted with her father’s dry skin. Her face emanates a healthy glow and her large, dark brown eyes still haven’t lost their youthful twinkle. The thick lips of the vain teenager open often to reveal her shimmery teeth and let her deep, southern belle voice ring through the air. She is soft spoken and gentle in her speech, but something about the way she holds her mouth gives her an air of authority that most people do not question.

By definition, Rosie’s Motel is a brothel and a crack house, so as the proud owner, Rosie is both a pimp and a drug dealer. But the stereotypes of both are broken by the lovely Miss Gerhart. The motel offers refuge to the lost hookers of the cornhusker district. It isn’t hard to see that Rosie prides herself in the way her girls are treated even more than she does in her appearance. She is fiercely protective of all the ladies who call the motel home, providing them with shelter, food, protection and a substantial cut of their earnings. Rosie treats the addicts that come looking for a score with the same kind of gentle hospitality. Rosie’s Motel serves as a safe haven for the drug addicted persons in District 11 where they can shoot up safely and without being judged.

Rosie may condone and facilitate the vices of other’s, but she has seen firsthand what happens to people who abuse morphling or let men abuse them. She has taken a solemn vow to herself to never even try whoring or scoring and leaves that to her loyal customers. Her hypocritical oath does little to stop rumors of course. Most of the teenage farm boys have shared stories with their friends about their passionate affairs with a particularly attractive hotel landlady. These stories do not bother Rosie in the least as they function as free advertising by attracting new young men to try their hand at courting her.

Behind the genteel hospitality and charming smile that Rosalyn shows to just about everyone is a shrewd businesswoman. Rosie knows that in her line of work, keeping good relationships is vital. And nothing keeps friends like the sweet smile, warm bed, and nice piece of booty that only Rosie can provide. Since she started Rosie’s Motel two years ago, business has been through the roof. You can attribute that to the hookers or drugs, but Rosie knows that nothing makes her motel work but her. Without her wise direction and genius marketing strategies, Rosie’s Motel would be no different from the trashy whorehousesshacks that spring up for a little bit and fade away. She is the force that protects her girls and gets her customers exactly what they want when they want it.

Fast, business relationships are easy to make, and even easier to brake. Rosie knows to be skeptical of everyone because in our hearts, we are all selfish jerks who would throw each other under the bus to help ourselves. For this reason, nobody can really be trusted. Nobody accept Randall. Rosalyn’s druggie brother is the only person whom she can really trust. Around him, she can drop the act of being a caring, madam/drug lord and be the carefree teenage girl that lives deep inside. That is why Rosie keeps taking him in instead of leaving him out in the cold like the rest of the Gerharts. She desperately craves the sincere company of someone who she knows probably is not smart enough to turn her in to the peacekeepers and would never want to.

Roland and Rachel Gerhart built their business from the ground up. They were both born to poor farmers, but because of their tenacity and hard work, the young couple managed to turn a small loan into a successful butcher shop. When asked why they succeeded when so many ambitious lower district teenagers fail, they tell people that they found something that they did better than anyone else and figured out how to make money doing it. The Gerharts did not build a multi-million dollar butcher shop empire or anything of the sort, but they managed to distance themselves from the poverty that consumes most of their district.

After securing a stable livelihood for their family, the Gerharts decided to have a child and so they had a bouncing baby girl, Rosalyn. Two years later, they were surprised to discover that Rachel was once again pregnant, this time with a son whom they named Randall. Rosie and Randy got along great as kids and they were best friends well into middle school.

When Rosie was fourteen and Randy was twelve, the Gerharts had a very strange houseguest. He was a scraggly old farmer who was suffering the dreadful illusions, body pains, and tremors associated with morphling withdrawal. The farmer begged for a place to stay and Rachel eventually let the man stay in a spare bedroom. The kids got to talk to the strange farmer and he opened their eyes to a whole new world. Randall saw how morphling gave people the ability to enter a whole new reality and leave everything behind. His meeting with the farmer shaped the rest of his life as he began his quest to live in a drug induced dream world as much as possible.

For Rosie, the meeting had a different effect. It allowed her to see what she can do better than anyone else. She talked to the man about his family farm that he sold to buy drugs and about the money he wasted to purchase the temporary company of a woman. That night, in her mind at least, Rosie’s Motel was born. While Randall got high, Rosalyn planned the greatest business venture since the Gerhart butcher shop.

On her sixteenth birthday, instead of asking for clothes or makeup like she normally did, Rosie asked her parents for money to start her motel. Armed with a wad of cash, she set out to find the perfect spot for the perfect brothel/drugstore. She bought a slummy apartment building a short way from the district square and went to work refurbishing it to transform the old thing into the glorious motel of her dreams.

Rosie’s Motel was opened the month before Rosie turned seventeen. It had four rooms and a lobby and was staffed by two young “maids.” Without fail, Rosie could get the best morphling and prices for her guests and the special company of her girls endeared her even more with the men of District 11. Within a few months, the motel had expanded to more than twice its original size and Rosie’s had taken a couple more girls off the street. In the true spirit of her parents, Rosalyn Gerhart built a business from the ground up.

Randall’s newfound addiction did little to endear him with his parents who quickly kicked him to the curb after they caught him stealing from them. High and alone, Randall slunk to his sister’s motel a defeated person. But Rosie was happy to welcome her beloved brother with open arms. Rosie tried to get Randall to sober up by cutting off his morphling supply once. He ended up finding another dealer who sold him a bad batch that nearly killed him. Now Rosie grumbles a little before giving her brother morphling, but when she supplies him with his drugs, she at least knows that there is nothing wrong with them.

Now, the Gerhart siblings are living comfortably in a flat above the motel. Rosie runs the operation smoothly and just inconspicuously enough not to garner too much attention from the peacekeepers. When sober, Randall provides a brute strength defense for Rosie’s hookers for if a client tries to hurt them. He also has been known to deliver room services to guests who preferred a different kind of company. Roland and Rachel are very proud of their daughter, whom they meet with regularly. This probably would not be the case though if they knew that she had been sheltering her brother in her cushy flat.