[Spoiler] P2 E2 bar scene

When Karim follows the pair of dreamers into the bar, why don’t they recognize him? At 14:20 one of them asks “are you a reporter?”

However, Ruskin subsequently tells Karim in Chapter 7 that the dreamers who’d been seeing the three elements of the house had also begun seeing his face. We know that the woman Karim spoke to was among those who were dreaming about the three things, since we see her at P2 E2 at 56:08 saying “I dreamt I was crawling down a long tunnel.”

Not much time elapses (a few days? A week?) between when Karim takes on Michelle’s case and when Ruskin shows Karim the artists’ renderings of his face.

Was Ruskin lying to Karim to get him to go back into the house?

Or, did the dreamers only begin seeing Karim’s face after he’d spoken to one of them?

ETA: grammatical mistake