They care about you in that they want you to continue buying from them making them money. Some dealers will make sure their junkies are fed, bills are paid, given phones etc. because they care to protect you as their customer. While its the money they want, you can see it as them caring for you.
Again, not all dealers are so cold, methodical and uncaring. All dealers want to make money, for sure, but there are many different kinds of dealers...
There are those dealers who want to see your face only long enough for the time it takes you to give them the money, and then they couldn't care less what happens to you, if you get hit by a car on your way back home or fall into a manhole. All you are to this guy is just another customer, and not one he particularly needs to keep.
There are those dealers who will chat you for a minute or two but will never take a real interest in you. It's still very much a business relationship, albeit a more amicable one, perhaps.
And then, if you're very lucky, you'll come to really like your dealer, and your dealer will come to really like you. It's the kind of relationship we have with our dealer. We're very fortunate and very lucky. He's more old school, has a reputation, and he's a more serious, professional dealer; but the man is very smart as well with some interesting things to say and so we like hanging out with him. I think we're some of his only customers to have ever seen the inside of his apartment.
He's just a real good guy. He trusts us, and I think he genuinely cares for us as friends. It occurred to me tonight that he must be pretty lonely when I expected his apartment to be full of people, and it wasn't. There wasn't anyone there, on his birthday, no less, and he kind of shrugged his shoulders and said that he didn't have many friends and that we were some of his closest friends.
Does it mean that he'll give us free dope from now on, or quit selling us dope altogether because it's bad for us? No, of course not, and it's because he still needs to eat and pay his bills, and at the end of the day, it's just what we do. But he cares and he tries to keep us as safe as he can. He serves us from his crib or a friends house, always a safe location, and he would never let us go sick.
I wish everyone could have a dealer like this, but, of course it's likely to be the exception and not the rule. It does happen, though, and these are the things I wish people knew about "the game" ...